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How to Design a Great Logo? (and Cheap!)

Professional logo design is challenging if you don't have experience working with graphic artists.

Here are 5 easy categories of logo design feedback that your designers need to help you get your logo done right and inexpensively (plus my recommendation for the best cheap logo design service!)

Dear Scott,

It's time for a logo for my new business website. But how do I get the logo design process started and what should my new logo look like?

I have been struggling with what to do. I have scoured the internet and I can tell you what I don't like, but I haven't seen anything I can mirror. How can I be as clear as possible with the designers so that it's easy for them to create a logo I like?

A professional-looking logo is key to your web site's credibility with customers. You are smart to prioritize this often difficult design task for your new e-business because a good logo can be a cost-effective differentiator for your new web site.

Good and affordable logo design is challenging because a good logo needs to encapsulate a lot of info about your business into a small and easily recognizable space, without costing you a fortune.

"If you don’t have a design background, communicating what you want to logo designers can be hard!

To create a good logo, you need to communicate with your designers as much as possible about your likes, dislikes, and assumptions early in the logo design process.

These communications are usually embodied in what’s called a “creative brief”.

5 Categories of Easy Feedback for Logo Designers

Use these five categories to organize your thoughts and give your logo designers the specific feedback that they need to meet your expectations:

1. Logo Shape: If you want a logo for display across the top of a web page, a wide, horizontal image is ok. But if you are going to use the logo anywhere else (like on a business card or in an advertisement), you want something more box-shaped. This is especially true if you plan to use the logo on social media sites.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social network services have created a standard that profile pictures and avatars should be square.

"These 5 easy logo design categories can help you organize your thoughts to communicate more effectively with your logo designers (and get a better logo)."

This suggests that a “stacked” logo is usually the way to go – meaning the words sit on top of each other so the shape is as square as you can get it.

2. Colors: If you have pre-existing colors or preferences, be sure to detail them. If you don’t care, say that, too. You’ll also want to be sure that the logo is high contrast so that it will look good when reduced to black and white. (Imagine it on a fax or in a newspaper ad, for example.)

3. Text: Share your preferences for fonts. You may have a specific font you like (or don’t like) or you can just start with adjectives like “modern”, “fancy”, “old-fashioned”, or “formal” to see what the designers come up with.

You also want to be specific about capitalization. For example would you want clickmillionaires.com or Clickmillionaires.com or CLICKmillionaires.com or ClickMillionaires.Com or ClickMillionaires.com?

If your brand name or slogan has multiple words, the designers also need to hear from you which words are most important. For example, in developing this logo for "Scott Fox's Click Millionaires Show" we had a lot of back and forth conversation about the relative size of “Scott Fox's” vs. “Click Millionaires” vs “Show”.

4. Object: Do you want a logo that is only words? Or should there also be a graphic image or character or other shape, too? The decision is once again up to you. (Text only logos are generally cheaper, of course.)

If you want an object, it is again helpful to provide suggestions of what you like or don’t want included so they use an object appropriate to your product/industry/market.

I usually ask for both the text and an accompanying graphic just to see what designers come up with. Sometimes good designers will come up with a unique and attractive graphic element that you did not expect (like Logonerds did with the Click Millionaires laptop in the logo above). If the designers' object concepts don’t please you, its easy to delete the object so you can focus their work on a spiffy text-only treatment instead.

5. Other Logo Variables: If there are particular areas where you need help, these offer the designers the opportunity to be creative. So if your company name or the official font is locked but your colors are not, let them know. If you are especially looking for a graphic, ask for help on that topic.

The opportunity to be creative is why designers become designers. Helping your logo design team to understand where to point their creativity will help you get what you want and help them enjoy the assignment better, too.

The more specific and organized you are for designers to help them represent your brand accurately, the more you free up their time to make your new logo design attractive and unique.

Invest the time to provide detailed guidance up-front and your brand’s visual identity can benefit from a good logo for a long time!

Comments

Thanks for the as ever useful info. I've been thinking of a relaunch and redesign of my logo for some time, and this will come in handy. Please, keep the great info coming, I read every week, have been to the 50+ traffic building school, and am just trying to get through the one year 'hump'. It is people like you who give people like me a fighting chance at success.

Hi Scott
As a graphic designer I would add a good idea is to show your designer examples of logos you like and logos you don't like. Not so they can be copied necessarily but it can save a lot of time if the designer knows from the start the sort of thing you have in mind.

Nice Post! Logo design process is not so simple as it looks like. There is vast thinking when one going to create a logo. Every thing should be perfect and accordingly when going to create logo. Thanks for sharing such an informative post.

I know the logo design arena is very competitive and also businesses are always looking for the best bang for their buck. I was quite impressed that some of the logo design companies actually offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee and thought it was sham until I came across a logo design company that offers this deal. You could also check them out at www.logo-design-studio.com as they are offering a new logo design at only $69.97 and a full refund if you're not happy with it.

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